DirectX 11.1 will be exclusive to Windows 8: Is Microsoft forcing gamers to upgrade?

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If you’re on the fence about upgrading to Windows 8 and its formerly-known-as-Metro tablet-style user interface, Microsoft may have just made the decision a little easier. The company has announced that the next incremental upgrade to DirectX, version 11.1 — and presumably every new version thereafter — will be exclusive to Windows 8.

Microsoft touts DirectX 11.1 as a piece of Windows 8, likening its exclusivity to Windows 8 (and Windows RT and Windows Server 2012) to how DirectX 11 was built specifically for Windows 7. However, if you were a Vista user, you may remember DirectX 11 being retrofitted for Vista, whereas Microsoft has made it clear that — at the moment, at least — DirectX 11.1 will be exclusive to Windows 8 without any plans to bring it to older operating systems.

Some Windows users may feel like Microsoft is constructing an artificial reason for people to switch to their new operating system, and a quick glance at the DirectX 11.1 features list will probably confirm their stance. Perhaps the biggest addition to come with the new version is native stereoscopic 3D support, a feature of which most gamers probably don’t take too much advantage. Before this addition, developers could only add stereoscopic 3D support to software by intentionally programming it with specific graphics cards that support it in mind.

As of now, unless you’re running a bunch of 3D software, you most likely don’t need to worry too much about upgrading to Windows 8 in order to nab DirectX 11.1. However, if there are no plans to retrofit 11.1, then it wouldn’t be surprising if future versions of DirectX with more significant upgrades were also not available for anything below Windows 8, eventually forcing an upgrade to access more significant features.

It’s also possible that, with DX11.1, Microsoft is testing out — or at least laying the groundwork — for the Xbox 720’s implementation of DirectX. Remember, the “X” in “Xbox” actually stands for the “X” in “DirectX” — an early codename for the Xbox was the lengthier “DirectXbox.” Currently, there’s no word if the next Xbox — or any upcoming console — will employ the exclusive DirectX 11.1, and as any PC Skyrim player will note with a frown and a sigh, games tend to be built for consoles then ported to PC nowadays, so they might not be built with a new DirectX in mind anyway.

One must also wonder if Microsoft is using this seemingly artificial exclusivity as an attempt to drum up sales for the recently released Windows 8, which has been met with mixed reviews. Though the operating system isn’t even three weeks old, hard sales figures haven’t yet been revealed, and normally a company would want to shout fantastic sales from the rooftops whenever possible.

Of course, if Microsoft really is using DirectX 11.1 to artificially force its user base to switch to Windows 8, it can only do so much. A large part of the power lies with the developers — if they don’t actually use any of the new DX11.1 features in their software, then there’s little reason to actually need those features.

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GatzLoc

I doubt any of the consoles will have directx 11.1 they’ll barely have directx 11. Remember that this time around, probably none of them will be running a flag-ship GPU and they’ve been in development for a-while now. A year from now, who knows but the WII U won’t and if the 720 and ps4 are going gold soon they def. won’t.

There’s no 11.1 gpus out right now, and spring 2013 looks to be the earliest we’ll be getting from AMD/ATI with Nvidia probably delaying until summer/fallish like they did this generation (q2 basically).

That pretty much means that 11.1 will be like direct x 10. Not heavily adopted at all.

http://www.jeffkibuule.com Jeff Kibuule

Consoles don’t use DirectX, they have DirectX-class hardware. There is a difference because a console can skip the API and code directly to the chip. For example, the ATI chip in the 360 supports hardware tesselation, but that’s a DirectX 10 feature, right? DirectX is about standardization, nvidia and ATI often through in special stuff that isn’t standardized like 3D vision and AMD HD3D.

user 9693

of course game devs knows the user base they’ll make it for windows 7 machines

and many game developers already criticised windows 8

John Kiser

3 Have and they were individuals not full on game developers….. Notch is scared of Windows 8 for no good reason…. Gabe Newell doesn’t want competition to steam direct from Microsoft and the guy at blizzard well has no idea what he is talking about….Windows 8 is selling well and will continue to sell well. Heck vista was viewed as bad and it still sold well.

chojin999

If Vista sold well there wouldn’t have been a rush at Microsoft to release Windows7.

Might die soon then, or be scaled down. Atleast we can say that it’s monopoly on computing is probably coming to an end; Personal computing, I mean.

user 9693

then what next?

fish sauce

Lots of passive aggressive moves to force people into upgrading.

‘foot in the door’ method is disgusting of course microsoft would use it.
apple methods is anti-consumer of course microsoft would use it.

Making artificial limitations like these should be illegal and deemed anti-competitive.

Microsoft should be fined by EU again.
Microsoft didn’t get it the first time. Perhaps EU needs to slap harder this time.

http://www.jeffkibuule.com Jeff Kibuule

Are we suddenly going to have a rush of games that require DirectX 11.1? Do you know how long it took just to make games that require DirectX 10 (which came out in 2007)? BF3 last year was the first big one, 4 years later. 4 years.

Again, this article is FUD. Common sense people, common sense.

GatzLoc

CRYSIS Derp. :P But tbh, Dx10 was a failure, instead of how long until they make it, how long until it actually looks better. Until a recent few games (nfs most wanted, etc.) I didn’t even think dx11 looked better than 9, esp. considering the perf. loss.

RIP Crysis they ported you, and ruined you. :( Dx9 is, was, and will remain the dominant platform for some time to come; if nothing else because the majority of games want backwards compatibility/have no need for the ‘newer’ features.

Effects can only hide bad models so much..

philtheone

This nothing new to people who have been using Microsoft products for years. Just a couple of examples:

Win95 OSR2 had USB support, but MS changed the support for Win98 and forced product manufacturers to not supply Win95 USB drivers in order to get Win98 certification.

Speaking of USB, MS said it was not possible to add USB to Windows NT 4.0, which forced business users to upgrade to Win2k as soon as it came out. Of course MS then released XP less that two years later to keep the upgrade cycle going. . .

user 9693

i think some 12-13 year old kid gave the idea of windows 8 to MS

me987654

Half the games still use DirectX 9 for XP compatibility…. not worried about this at all

user 9693

windows 7 is going to the next xp and windows 8 is the next vista

godrilla

Windows 9 Is the next xp/win7

http://profiles.google.com/enigmav8 Chris Kleczynski

Windows 11 is the next Windows 9.

http://www.facebook.com/rycr2002 Ryan Krotowski

Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you? We don’t even have a Windows 9 yet.

If you paid attention, you’d know that Metro is actually really good on touch devices, it’s just not as efficient for some desktop users as the old start menu was.

GatzLoc

Yes, but is it better than android? People don’t want huge ass flippin tiles when they can have a smaller icon for the same thing. Plus the wider adoption of android means, derp. We’ll see, WP8 and to a smaller extent BBOS let’s see if they survive.

Mirko Schenk

While I tend to agree, there seems to be a significant number of users which actually prefers the tiles. And at least in one thing they’re right: Android home screens look too confusing too fast, since Android does absolutely nothing to help an unified look. Every Widget has to contain its background, whether it’s the “default” one (which is different for Android 1.x, 2.x, and 3.0+, and often modified by manufacturers) or something else is up to the developer. Even Google’s own search and clock widgets don’t look anything like the other Android widgets.

user 9693

windows 8 was never meant for non touch devices , MS always aimed for touch devices with windows 8 right from the build in 2011

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=515283865 Scott Fulford

Time to push game developers to begin porting their software to OpenGL. Follow Steams’ lead and produce games for Linux. Then we won’t be at the grips of Microsoft with their DirectX dictation.

Mirko Schenk

So true. But additionally, working graphic card drivers are required, which still seems to fail thanks to incompatible copyright ideas and lazy manufacturers. For example, I can’t play any full screen game in Linux because the ATI driver completely messes up for full screen OpenGL applications… (And I really don’t like to spend the cost of a tablet for a new graphic card that should work fine…)

Simon Forsman

Make sure you get an nvidia card next time, their OpenGL performance is ahead of D3D9 and not far behind D3D10/11, + they keep updating their Linux drivers for far longer than AMD(normally a 10 year old nvidia GPU will have freshly updated drivers for the latest kernel and x.org versions). (and they also have drivers for Solaris and BSD).

AMD only seem to optimize their OpenGL drivers properly if a big AAA title using OpenGL exclusivly gets released and make them look bad in benchmarks.

John Kiser

AMD has always had poor openGL optimizations because they don’t properly support it. They support it through a compatibility layer instead of native support where Nvidia has outright supported openGL for a long while now. A good show of openGL support in something out now with AMD vs Nvidia is Second Life. Nvidia has great support and supports vertex buffer objects but AMD users are forced onto older drivers and have to shut VBO (an openGL extension) off

VirtualMark

They’re almost definitely trying to force people to upgrade, how else will they get people to use those awful tiles?

user 9693

it’s not about tiles , tiles are good it’s about the desktop mode which is i can say horrible

http://www.jeffkibuule.com Jeff Kibuule

Using features in DirectX 11.1 if a user has Windows 8 installed is NOT the same as requiring DirectX and Windows 8. Games can support multiple versions of DirectX, shocking I know.

This article is FUD. Common sense would dictate that if gamers are still on Windows 7, then no sane developer would require Windows and DX11.1. Plus, it’s a .1 release for a reason, most of the features are tied to Windows 8 and the only feature worth mentioning to non-developers is vendor-agnostic stereoscopic 3D support. Don’t care about that? Then you aren’t missing out on anything!

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CDQXGLDTL2M7E72W3UDYFABANY bob k

Game publishers, support OpenGL.

Robert

Didn’t work when they did it to try to force me off of XP to Vista, ain’t gonna work now. Suck it MS.

preilly2

It looks to me as if the real reason Microsoft is trying to force users to use Windows 8 is all of the clickable inducements to spend your money on the Modern/Metro interface. Microsoft can’t be Apple, but they’re trying to get us to buy into their ecosystem the same way many of us have done with Apple on iTunes.

godrilla

They are desperate

george law

This alone lets us know that where gamers goes so does everyone else. Microsoft wants as many gamers stuck on Win8. Most may stay on windows Xp/7. Valve just might turn the industry upside down with optimized openGL support. We may be headed out of the dark ages for Unix & Linux gaming. Most people do not realize the power us gamers have on the entire PC landscape.

John Kiser

Just like they turned the industry upside down by making steam on OSX? Seriously people need to consider that not a lot of stuff is made for alternative OS’es its good for indies that make cross platform to begin with but not many others….They aren’t going to move to linux unless there is a huge market for it and there is not currently and likely never will be a large enough market to pull in the mainsteam fully

http://www.facebook.com/rycr2002 Ryan Krotowski

To be fair, there are quite a lot more games on OSX now that Steam is avalable.

Developers will follow the gamers. If enough gamers jump ship rather than upgrade to Windows 8, game devs will see that and compensate since they want to sell their games to as many as possible.

Honestly though, instead of a shift to OpenGL and Linux, we’ll probably just see most games developed for DX11 on Windows 7 while gamers try to hold out for a hopefully-better Windows 9 and whatever DX version it brings along.

John Kiser

developers will follow gamers sure but Linux only supports OpenGL and unless they are building out Wine based direct X 9 compatible games it is highly. Linux wont magically get a mass influx and a lot of games that ended up released for OSX were relying on things like Cider to run which relies on some abstraction layer things. There are some games but you don’t see a lot of big games released natively supported…

Simon Forsman

OS X is not free and cannot be bought without also buying a Apple computer.

I don’t think its very likely that this will cause a huge move to Linux though but unless Microsoft manages to push enough Win8 copies by the time the next set of consoles are released we might see developers shift towards OpenGL on Windows as well which will weaken Microsofts grip on the PC game market slightly.

John Kiser

Gamers aren’t going to magically shift over to linux because of steam i assure you. There are only really indie games available right now and valve’s own released games… Games would need to be re-written to openGL and gamers will stick with windows 7 rather than jump to linux if they don’t want to upgrade to windows 8…..

Windows 8 has already sold quite a lot of copies and people complaining one way or another about it are a bit foolish…It is not that bad of an OS and honestly other than a few people complaining about a “start screen” its a better OS and far more usable once you actually learn it.

Forced upgrades……..Microsoft continues to get more and more like Apple.

jaytmoon

Hacktivists will port this over in short order, IF the features are compelling enough. But imho, 3d is not that big a deal…. hardly woth the investment in a lot of new hardware

http://www.facebook.com/MatthewTBranch Matthew Branch

Def would be nice if game publishers supported OpenGL a lot more. Would be nice to be able to use my linux boxes more often then i due, or (this will never happen) mickey$oft developing directx for linux. Windows 8 is gonna be a flop just to the fact that the new UI sucks and the desktop UI is even worse.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1363021071 Calvin Garcia

gamer’s will move to linux dx11.1 dont matter

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1363021071 Calvin Garcia

linux is goin to take over the world everything use linux android modems software in your keyboards everything use linux nexted year all new game’s will work with linux steam box is linux, linux is better no viruses nothing easy to use

Nathan McSparin

linux has no viruses now. but anything that becomes too popular will be broken by hackers. It’s not impossible it’s just not profitable enough for the criminals yet.

The expandable nature of linux does make it quite desirable though.
Absolutely any feature you want can be plugged into the kernel.

And while not invincible it is much more stable than anything else around.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1363021071 Calvin Garcia

linux is in your phone android it sell more the any other phone on the market today

http://twitter.com/curto4187 CO

Microsoft has always forced gamers to upgrade this way NEWBS.. That’s why they are called M$ the greedy sons of… Seriously are you new?

Ngneer

I smell more lawsuits and antitrust charges against Microsoft.

Freddy Shumakerr

Most people have the idea right. Stop feeding these jerks and just switch to Linux.The only thing that Microsoft wants to do anymore is line their pockets with tons of cash from you. They used to care about the customers and games looked better 5 years ago than they do now. Not now though. I don’t know if they laid off their best direct x programmers or if someone was disgruntled and screwed up the code but I have to tell you that all in all Microsoft is about as good as Atari was when they had the 2600. They have come down a lot of levels and are just peddling their software to us. It’s as if if someone were to come up to you on the street and say hey,”would like to buy this steaming bag of dog crap from me” , “It’s fresh:) only 40 dollars and it even has corn” Yes, you will have to think but why limit yourselves anymore. I’m not very experienced with Linux yet but I can already tell you that music sounds better, and it has a built in office application for all you writers out there. Right now I am running on Windows 8 Pro 64-bit and I’m not at all impressed. It’s definitely better and more secure than 7. While I have used 8 for quite some times now I am building a pc from older parts that are similar to what I have now which is a phenom II 965 8gb of memory and a HD Radeon 6850. I’m not calling it AMD either. Get over yourselves AMD. To the rest of you that would like to keep your sanity and drop this company that brings you mediocrity year after year. Linux Mint is looking really good. There are many distrobutions of Linux though. Imagine that you can pick and choose what you want or if you want to really go all out just get all of that. We have 1tb hard drives now a days for really cheap so no excuses go get Linux:) No more disappointments.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1305683907 Chris R Schneider

how can music “sound better” in linux. it all depends on your soundcard. and the quality of digital files you are playing. but if you know something i dont. tell me. because music that sounds better would be a good reason to switch

Journey Silius

Literally what cant DX11 do? It does every advanced lighting, shader, every advanced thing that game programmers can do and use in their games.. DX11 can already do it. Anything 11.1 or DX12 will do are going to be trivial pointless things. Games wont use it, they wont need it. This will be a case of even less need for upgrading to a new DirectX than DX9 was. Hell DX9 is still being used in a lot of games today, and can still do most of what DX11 can. I am calling it right now, DX11.1/12 will be completely obsolete for 99% of games coming out in the next 5+ years. They will all be coded on DX11 and do everything which they want to accomplish in their engine. Windows8 is already a huge failure, DX12 will be just as big.

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